Surviving Child Custody and Divorce When Drugs Are Involved

I am a twenty year old mother of a one year old girl. I became pregnant and married three months after conceiving; naturally the birth was unplanned. We came together and made the hard decision of keeping the child and in order to provide what we then believed to be a "stable" home, we married. Instantly the problems started. Obviously we were both young, in college and did not have jobs. We were very under prepared to be parents. We could not only provide her with food and clothing, but we were so financially behind, we could not provide insurance or even furniture.

My husband, before I had met him, had used marijuana on several occasions. I had only been exposed to the substance twice. He had since claimed to have stopped using and I did not at the time see it as an issue. Not long into my pregnancy he used on a few rare occasions. This was only the beginning of our troubles. He then showed me his true addiction to violent, vile pornography. Both of these addictions began to hinder our relationship and cause a great divide.

I address the issues, but my concerns went unnoticed, unheeded. A month after my daughter was born, I succumbed to the pressure and began using marijuana as well. It was a silly, childish, and obviously thoughtless mistake. We used everyday for an entire month until I realized how much this was affecting my relationship with my husband, but more importantly the health of my child.

The drug use was an off and on habit for my husband and I, but the pornography addiction became a huge problem. I could not take a ten minute shower without my husband hopping on our dial up Internet and searching for graphic, violent images. No matter how loudly I approached him while he was viewing such material; he never seemed to notice my presence. This was obviously a huge concern for me.

Not longer after my child was born we moved to another city an hour and a half away from our families. The problems only seemed to get worse from that point. We moved to a college town that can only be referred to as a cesspool. All of our neighbors either used drugs or sold them and other various illegal activities. All of his friends were drug users as well and would invite themselves over to our home even when our child was present to smoke marijuana. I did my best not to talk to these people in hopes that they would see that I was very unfriendly to their kind and they would take offense and leave. However, these "types" of people can't seem to grasp simple concepts like that and if anything, they came more often.

Not only was I off and on smoking marijuana, my husband was a heavy smoker and began selling at one point. This was a very low point of our lives. The pornography became ever more of a problem when I would catch him online for six or more consecutive hours with over 500 websites in the history from that one time period. They were disturbing images that depicted illegal acts.

When the problems finally brought me to the breaking point, when I absolutely could not take anymore, I called my mother, who resided 6 hours away. The very same day she drove to our home and picked up my child for an indefinite amount of time. It took me 13 more days after my child left to finally pack my bags, while my husband was in his classes and leave him. I went through the various stages of emotions: sadness, denial, regret, anger, pure hatred...I was so confused and bombarded wit a flood of emotions.

Exactly a week later my husband filed for divorce. He was asking for custody of Amy - which obviously, no matter how bad of a mother I had been to my child - was not going to fly with me! If anything I would grant my parents temporary conservatorship over my child before allowing my husband, the porn addicted, pot smoker to keep my child!

After filing our pro se response, my parents filed an intervention to gain temporary custody of my daughter. This seemed to have struck a nerve with my husband and his family. My parents, between themselves, own three companies, two of which have been in operation for 20 years and successfully at that! My mother works for Home Lance Security and my father is the CEO of his companies. On the other side of the spectrum lies my husband's family. His father cannot keep a job for more than a month and his mother works for a vocational school. In a year Tony has only had one job, which started three months after his daughter and I had left him. He kept said job for one week before, as he said in his testimony, was "let go".

Since leaving my husband, I have remained drug-free in a non-smoking home. I had also established employment within one week of leaving him, where I have been steadily employed. My daughter had been going to daycare on a daily basis and is very well taken care of, mostly by my parents. I have decided to take the stand and admit to my mistakes.

Do not contact your spouse directly! I learned this the very hard way. Never submit anything to him in writing or leave messages of any kind. Even calls can be recorded or his lawyer might be listening in. All of this can be used against you! Of course most importantly, do not ever threaten your spouse or tell him he can never see your child. If he asks to see them, call your lawyer and talk it out with them. Always go through your lawyer, because anything you say can be twisted and turned around. It's best to let the lawyers fight it out themselves.

The absolute best course you can possibly take is telling the truth and show your remorse for the mistakes you had made. I guarantee that if your spouse is or was a constant drug user, they will come off to any Judge as cocky and smug. The best approach for any former user is to admit to your mistakes and take responsibility for them. Once you are on the defense, chances are you will try to make excuses for the things that you did or should have done and it will seem that you are not only remorseful for these mistakes, but you refuse responsibly as well.

Never point fingers! You can swear up and down, all day long, that it was your spouse that was neglectful and that forced drugs upon you, but at the end of the day, you are the adult and you should make the decisions. No one can force your hand in illegal activities such as drug use. You allowed this person to neglect and expose your child to these illegal substances and what did you do? Sat idly by and let them continue. Once again, take responsibility and if anything share it, as long as you do not place most of the blame on your spouse, but rather say that you both made bad decisions and you are now doing your best to rectify them!

Tell your lawyer everything! If there is something that could be used against you, even from your past that your spouse has been privy to, you need to tell your lawyer. In times of divorce, the fighting gets dirty! The chances are great that they will use the information that you trusted them with against you. This could be anything, so it's in your best interest to be as open and honest no matter how embarrassing the information is. This will also help with the next step of advice I will divulge to you. If your spouse's lawyer is anything like my husband's is, he will try to cut you off and force you to answer multi-faceted questions with a simple yes or no. If your lawyer knows the entire story, he will know where you were trying to head and be able to redirect your testimony.

Say as much as possible in very few words. The problem that you will encounter if you are called to testify is that your spouse's lawyer wants to skew your words and twist them. He wants you to turn everything around onto yourself. They will cut you off if you do not answer yes or no. Going back to the first advice I have given, do not try to defend your self. If the question is yes, simply answer yes. This speaks volumes, because then you don't have to try to get your point across quickly, where the chances are high you might word everything wrong. The previous advice will help immensely in this situation. Suppose the question was, "Have you ever spent the night with another male other than a relative"...you might have in order to escape an abusive husband or a dangerous situation, no matter the reason for doing so, you still slept in another man's home away from your spouse. If your lawyer knows the circumstances, he will be able to redirect. If he does not, your spouse's lawyer might turn it into something completely different. (Yes, I realize that wasn't the best analogy! J)

Calling Witnesses. If you or your spouse was using marijuana, this means that there must have been people that either you or your spouse had associated with that also used marijuana. When you are a drug addict, nonusers are less likely to befriend you. Tolerating a person on drugs is a hard task and many people choose to avoid the situation altogether. The best thing to do whether you were using or not, is to remove yourself from any environment that could possibly expose you to further drug use immediately. The chances that your spouse is still using illegal substances are very high, especially if they are still in the same place they used before. This will be beneficial to you, your spouse will have a short list of witnesses to call in order to testify as to what they had seen while the child was present. (Bathing, feeding, abuse, neglect, etc.) My husband's only witnesses were family and one young lady my age that has a son almost the exact age as my child. Not only did she say she witness him doing "dad stuff" but she had to admit that she used marijuana with us. This completely discredited her testimony.

If you can avoid calling witnesses such as family members or anyone that has ever been exposed to substance abuse or been arrested, do so at all costs! Family members can be beneficial if they do not take sides. If the God's honest truth is that both you and your spouse did a bad job and they witnessed this, they need to say so. However, most families will take up for their relatives in order to make themselves look better.

Never and I do mean NEVER call a witness that has done drugs with or without you to testify to the fact that you are a good parent. When your judgment is impaired by illegal drugs, it's hard to say what is really right and wrong. This is why so many people that use substances commit illegal acts -their perception of right and wrong is horribly skewed and any Judge will recognize that.

There are other simple things you will need to know when it comes to addressing the people of the court:

You and all of your witnesses or support need to dress conservatively. If this means you need to go out with all of your support and buy all new dress clothes, do so.

Any tattoos or piercing need to be covered and removed. I had to take out all of my piercings and wore a black dress coat in 100 degree weather to cover my tattoos on my wrists.

When speaking with the Judge, always and I do mean ALWAYS address him as "Your Honor". You also need to respond to both lawyers as sir. Being polite looks so much better!

Avoid response such as "yeah" or "nah". Any type of slang term is terrible. Check that at the door!

Under no circumstances are you to cuss! No matter how mad you might get, do not show it, in your actions or words. If you cannot handle a single court appearance, how can you handle a child?

Be very organized. Bring any and all paperwork that you might need. Doctor's reports, shot records for the child, daycare receipts, anything and everything pertaining to this case! If you have emails, text messages, voicemails, bring copies and recordings of them. Anything that can be used as evidence need to be brought to the light.

Most of the advice that I have given I had learned the hard way. It's best to avoid learning this way when it could be too late. I am still in the process of divorce, but the temporary orders are now in place. Within a few days, I have to give my daughter to a man that she has only seen over the course of six months, none of which were ever consecutive. She has not seen her father in four months and now I have to send her on her merry way to spend over night visits with him. Not only am I terrified, but I am hurt and feel like such a let down to my daughter.

I wish you the best of luck with your circumstances and I will be reporting the next steps in my case. I hope the next step can be titled, "How to Survive Joint Custody Problem-Free". However, I might need to get more advice than I can give in the beginning, but I hope that my experiences can help anyone else that is encountering these problems as well.